...For San Fernando Road in Glendale, this will require an aggressive and magnetic dedication of all that the city’s redevelopment staff can power up. All the freeway ramp “fly overs,” at-grade rail crossing upgrades, widened streets and baby trees in hardscape are fine and good, but they serve only as backdrops for commuting Disney and DreamWorks employees, and other pass-through visitors.

Leadership, flexibility and imagination are needed now so that the area will benefit from the preferences and revenues, even while waiting out an economic downturn, that both commuters and regional residents represent, and attract them to San Fernando Road with arts-related commerce. Now is the time for redevelopment plans for the next big steps needed to attract those businesses with incentives, publicity and the full bag of tricks required — including on a regional, federal, even philanthropic Eli Broad-type level.

Not that I was gone exactly, but after a week of epic feasts, Christmas events, Hanukkah parties and long walks in the rain I'm back to work tomorrow and am checking back in mentally...

The biggest story in Glendale (and pretty everywhere else) has been the ghastly murders committed in Covina by local resident Bruce Pardo. He lived in Montrose at 4004 Sunset Avenue. Additionally, last night his second rental car was found in Glendale. His first rental car was booby trapped, so the discovery of the second prompted Glendale PD to evacuate a number of local residents along Glenoaks Blvd near Scholl Canyon while the LA County Sheriff's Department Bomb Squad did their thing. No explosives were found.

Here are items about Pardo in the News-Press from a local perspective:

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Drug and Cash Seizure – Monday, December 8, 2008:Vice-Narcotics Detail seized approximately $865,000 in U.S. currency and several pounds of marijuana originating from a Glendale case. Four arrests were made.

I'd imagine they don't seize the better part of a million dollars in cash very often...perhaps they can afford bring back the Citizen's Academy this year?

Friday, December 19, 2008

...Currently in Glendale, the Arts and Culture Commission operates under the purview of the Parks and Recreation Department. This is a missed opportunity. As a city, we need a paradigm change. Instead of considering arts and culture nonessential extracurricular activities — services facilitated by the city — we should consider them a genre of industry to be lured to Glendale.

We must view the arts as a way to draw people and businesses to the area. Cultivation of arts-related businesses capitalizes on our geographical proximity to the entertainment industry, develops economic opportunities for residents and revenue sources for the city, and at the same time, can revitalize overlooked areas.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

I'd like to welcome to Glendale Colin Bogart, who is the City's new in-house liason from the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition who will be working to make our streets in Glendale safer and more inviting for cyclists. Read about it in the News-Press here.

The initial scope of the projects being considered at the moment is quite modest, but ultimately the city needs to update the 1995 Bikeway Master Plan and actuallyIMPLEMENT IT.

The China Inn space next to Trader Joe's on Glendale Ave. has now been leased by Chipotle. Seems a bit odd to locate it this far from downtown (my friend John actually wrote the company to encourage them to look at the Famima space) but Chipotle will by default be one of the better nearby Mexican(ish) options.Side note: while at Trader Joes today, I weirded out the checker by wearing a neon orange jacket (I bike at night!) and only buying entirely orange products- Super Orange Flavor Emergen-C, tangerine juice, etc. It wasn't intentional!

I don't know if it's the economy, poor planning, incompetent building management, lack of traffic, or what, but the soaring retail vacancy rate at the Exchange keeps me up at night. Currently available for lease in the square block bordered by Brand, Maryland, Broadway and Wilson: Jamba Juice, Aveda, Togo's/Tom's, Famima (sadly), Ofeli, Hotter Than Hollywood, Anahis Couture, FastFrame (soon, apparently).Are you depressed yet? I haven't even shown you the Ben Franklin bench. Poor Ben literally had THE U.S. CONSTITUTION stolen from under his nose and sold for scrap!

There are a few bright spots on the block that seem to be doing fairly well: Angela's, Urartu Coffee, Tofu Village, Starbucks, Sansai, Fortune Inn and the recently remodeled Zono Sushi. But something needs to be done to prevent this stretch of mid-Brand from turning into Detroit.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Another free lunchtime classical concert is coming up on Wednesday, December 17th. This Wednesday's concert will feature violin and cello duos.

The concert is from 12:10-12:40 at the First Baptist Church at the corner of Wilson and Louise in downtown Glendale. Please come over on Wednesday and check it out. I attended the concert on December 3rd with several co-workers and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Here are some videos and photos from Charles Phoenix's wonderful Moonlight Rollerway Holiday Jubilee. I've been to several of Charles' slideshows before, but didn't realize that this particular event would be 1/3 slide show and 2/3 wildly inventive roller skating holiday extravaganza. The skaters of all ages were incredible. I enthusiastically second the Atwater Village Newbie's endorsement: "the best 3 hours of Christmas-related fun we could have without standing directly under mistletoe".

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Hey Glendale, put the credit cards down, drag yourself from the clutches of The Americana and pony up one single measly dollar for a lovely evening of entertainment. Candlelight tours of the Doctor's House are tonight (12/13) and next Saturday.

Please welcome Everything Glendale to the (very thin) Glendale blog scene! It's a group blog that just started a few weeks ago but has already done some very interesting posts about our city. Here are my two favorite posts thus far:

Everything Glendale is a collaborative/group blog and is currently looking for contributors. If you have something interesting to say about your city but don't necessarily want to deal with the hassles of your own site, please contact them and make yourselves heard.

There is also the Glendale Family Jewels, which is like the cranky uncle in the attic. They are certainly Glendale-oriented, but focus mostly on petty city council drama. I don't include a link to them in my sidebar because, opinions aside, I feel their reflexively dismissive tone is unnecessarily polarizing and detrimental to civic life and engagement.

If you know of any other Glendale blogs, please e-mail me or comment and I will update the list.

With the exception of the News-Press, the coverage of Glendale in major media is incredibly thin for a city of 207,000+ people. The only practical thing we as citizens can do to remedy this situation is to get out there and report what's going on in our own neighborhoods and share our local discoveries. If you'd like to start a neighborhood blog and don't know where to begin, please contact me and I would be glad to help you set one up.

Frequently when I mention that I live in Glendale to someone who lives far away, and the first thing out of their mouth is "wow, you must go to Porto's all the time, I love their potato balls!" or some such thing. I don't post about Porto's here very often because this is a site for people who live in Glendale, and posting about Porto's is just too obvious. Everyone loves Porto's, and I'm not going to tell you anything about Porto's that you don't already know. Or can I?

Here are my top secret Porto's tips:

the plain cheese rolls are the best item in the pastry case (they don't look like much, but they are astonishing)

if you ask nicely and know exactly what you want, in the afternoon you can order an item or two from the big pastry section on the north side via the shorter cafe line on the south side and an employee will run over and grab it for you

when the cafe line is choked at lunch, the coffee line will take your sandwich order

the side salad with balsamic vinegarette is excellent, and densely packed into a little bowl that expands to fill an entire plate

if you ask really nicely when Betty or Raul aren't around, you can get a free refill on the already very reasonable and tasty coffee

best sandwich, Glendale: Pastrami

best sandwich, Burbank: Italian (better bread than Glendale location)

best soup: corn chowder (Fridays)

Burbank serves amazing mini round Italian rolls with their soup, while Glendale serves horrible flavorless cracker things with the soup. They bear a strong resemblance to communion wafers. At the Burbank location, if you ask very nicely and are good at negotiating (I used to sell cars, which helped), you can arrange to buy the special soup rolls by themselves, but they'll only let you buy around 7 of them, and that's if you're lucky

potato balls are great for parties. they keep well and revive nicely after a few minutes in the oven

when they tell you a cake is "the size of a sheet of typing paper", imagine that sheet of typing paper is 7 inches tall. and made of cake.

Anyways, when in doubt, just ask someone nicely. I have nothing but praise for the staff at both locations.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

I intended to hike with the Sierra Club in Griffith Park tonight but completely forgot about the DWP Light Festival traffic. As a result, I arrived about 15 minutes after all of the hiking groups had left, but ran into a group of 5 very nice non-Sierra Club hikers who let me join them on a hike up to Mt. Hollywood. It was quite cold, but the skies were crystal clear and a spectacular panorama of Los Angeles and Glendale was our reward. This is a view I never get tired of:I took the picture below earlier tonight. Its not one of my more spectacular efforts at first glance....but it is actually a (very cruddy) picture of the International Space Station, which was visible tonight in the skies above Glendale from 5:21-5:27pm. I was unsure how visible it would be, but the dot of the space station was quite bright and I was able to easily track it as it swiftly moved across the sky, rising above Burbank and ultimately disappearing beyond Eagle Rock.If you haven't been to the DWP Festival of Lights already, you are out of luck, as the event is now open to (hellish) vehicular traffic. I walked the festival last week with my parents, but after hiking tonight I thought it might be fun to drive through the festival with the top down on my Miata. After one look at the hundreds of cars waiting to enter the event at 9:30, I decided to save my sanity (and clutch) by heading home.

Friday, December 5, 2008

The Glendale Rose Float Association is looking for volunteers to decorate this year's entry in the Rose Parade. Last year's float featuring the Grand Central Air Terminal was gorgeous, and this year's float featuring The Alex looks fantastic too.

From my apartment I can walk to three markets (Albertson's, Vons, and Ranch Market) within minutes. I didn't appreciate how convenient this situation was until I had to buy supplies for a social gathering at the last minute. I walked out the door to Ranch Market, bought some hummus, cheese and a bottle of wine and was back in my living room in under ten minutes. No traffic, no stress. I found the experience very satisfying and direct.

I'm also fortunate to live within very easy biking distance from my office. I still have my car for far flung errands, but I don't need it to live my life. If oil goes back up to $200 a barrel, I'm fine. If my car breaks down, I'm fine. It's a very liberating feeling.

Tonight I've been playing with an online gadget that looks up amenities within walking distance of an address and then grades that location on walkability. My home address in Tropico scored 88/100 - Very Walkable. And my office in downtown Glendale? 97/100 - Walkers' Paradise.

Beyond dodgy timeshare schemes, Glendale has an appalling rate of fraud and identity theft, so be extremely wary of giving out your personal information and don't let your credit card out of your sight.

Over the last several years myself and many of my co-workers in Glendale have had our credit cards compromised. Frequently the method is for a restaurant server or sales clerk to discreetly swipe the credit card through a skimmer that stores credit card numbers. Those numbers are later reencoded onto the magnetic strips of other credit cards and used to make fraudulent purchases. Because of this, I avoid using plastic unless its a self swipe machine.

Identity Theft Arrest – Wednesday, November 26, 2008:Officers conducted a probation search at the 400 block of West California. During the probation search, three bags of stolen mail, numerous credit cards, CDL’S credit profiles, a card skimmer, a computer and two stolen guns were located. One of the guns was stolen out of Azusa and the other was stolen out of LAPD Mission Area. The probationer was arrested.

Coalition for a Green Glendale, on a 4-1 vote, got approval for its first community-run garden Tuesday, and without even asking for it, seeds were sown for a second site nearby on the Verdugo Wash.

The garden site approved Tuesday will be at 870 Monterey Road, on a vacant city-owned, P-shaped lot near the corner with Cordova Avenue that can accommodate up to 40 raised plots for organic produce farming.

Unlike two other public gardening sites at Palmer and Verdugo parks, the 11,000-square-foot Monterey garden will be the first in Glendale to be independently run with bylaws and a lease agreement with gardeners, all under the administration of a local nonprofit, Coalition for a Green Glendale.

It will also include a drought-resistant demonstration garden and communal fruit trees.

You can find out more at the Coalition For A Green Glendale site. I took the liberty of converting their community garden interest form from a pesky PDF to a JPEG. If you live nearby and are interested in a plot, please print out the flyer and send it in.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

To pummel you in the head with Christmas spirit, here's a house I spotted in Burbank today:And here are my completely FREE holiday event picks:

City of Glendale Tree Lighting CeremonyWednesday, December 3, 20087:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.Glendale City Hall--Perkins PlazaDescription: This holiday celebration features choral music, lighting of the City Hall tree and a special visit from Santa Claus! Free parking is available in the Civic Center Parking Structure (enter off of Wilson). Hot chocolate and candy canes will be served. In case of rain, the event will be cancelled.

Merry Tuba ChristmasDecember 14, 20087:00pmThe Alex TheatreThe annual Merry Tuba Christmas event at the Alex Theatre features hundreds of tuba and euphonium players of all ages from throughout Southern California. Song sheets will be distributed and the audience is encouraged to sing along. Tickets are FREE to the public.

The Griffith Park DWP Light Festival(Vehicle-Free From Now Until December 7th)Driving through the annual DWP Light Festival simulates sitting in a traffic jam in Reno for 2 hours. Make sure you go on the vehicle-free nights before December 7th to miss the traffic. Last year we parked at the Zoo before walking through and it was quite lovely.

This week during one of my frequent lunches at Angela's Bistro I noticed a flyer for two upcoming free chamber music concerts at the First Baptist Church of Glendale. The first concert was on November 19th and was written up by Ruth Sowby in the News-Press.

The upcoming concerts are on December 3rd and 17th at noon. Sack lunches are available after the show from Angela's for $6. The First Baptist Church is at the corner of Wilson & Louise in downtown Glendale.

I’m still fat and logey and wall-eyed from our big, overstuffed, Rockwellian Thanksgiving yesterday. Last night I dreamed of Squanto teaching the Pilgrims to bury peyote at the bases of their corn plants, giving every soul in Plymouth wonderful, terrible visions of the Second Coming of their Lord, visions so intense that sparks flew from the oversized buckles on their big, black hats.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

On Sunday I attended the Old Town Montrose walking tour led by our own very knowledgeable Mayor John Drayman. The tour was written up in detail at Sunroom Desk, which is a new blog focused on Glendale community issues. I don't know Montrose very well beyond the menu at La Cabinita, but I will certainly be back soon to explore further.

Crumbs Bakeshop is now open on Brand, next to Granville Cafe. The space is a bit weird, with no tables or chairs in sight. I had a delicious miniature free sample cupcake and a decent cup of coffee. The sample size cupcakes are a perfect portion size for something so rich, but they don't sell them a la carte- you have to buy them in packs of 12 for $18(!). The regular cupcakes are $3-$4 and approximately the size of my head.Free sample chocolate pecan cupcake.Tasty though the cupcakes may be, without smaller portion sizes or a place to sit I won't be making Crumbs a regular part of my afternoon coffee break rotation.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Today my Dad and I walked from Union Station to the sea with Franklin Avenue's Great L.A. Walk. Our route was Cesar Chavez to Sunset to Santa Monica Boulevard. I had a great time and held up pretty well physically. Here are a few photos.

There's only one way to start an 18 mile day: with a mega-breakfast at Phillippe's. I also satisfied my once-a-year craving for corned beef hash.The crowd gathers at Union Station.We're off!Some hand-scrawled insanity in Santa Monica.Finally, 18.3 miles after we started, the sweetest sight.The hero of this year's walk was my Dad. At this time last year, he was recovering from a heart attack and could barely walk around the grocery store without getting winded. In only a year, he's gotten into good enough shape to walk 18 miles!The full set of photos is up on flickr. And a big thanks to Mike at Franklin Avenue for organizing another great event!

The recordings, in some cases being made available for the first time, can be listened to through the media player (Windows Media, Real, etc.) on any computer--at home, school, or even in the Glendale Public Library.

It's incredibly cool that the library has digitized these histories and made them freely available as mp3's. I look forward to listening to them.

Move west, Laemmle! Downtown Glendale is very well placed to attract audiences not just from Glendale, but also from Burbank, North Hollywood, Atwater Village, Glassell Park, Eagle Rock, Silver Lake and Los Feliz. Currently the most convenient independent options for these areas are the Playhouse 7 (too far) or Los Feliz 3 (too small). Opportunity knocks!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Google has now made the immense Life Magazine photo archive searchable. Here is a beautiful 1940 Glendale photo from the Life archive:That of course is the Grand Central Air Terminal with a gorgeous DC-3 in the foreground. The terminal building is still standing, barely. It has been closed since incurring damage in the '94 Northridge quake. The building is currently owned by Disney, which also owns most of the surrounding land that once made up what was formerly the premiere airport in the L.A. area in the days before WWII. The area where the DC-3 is parked is currently used as a parking lot. You can pay a visit to the parking lot and get a good look at the terminal building which is located at 1310 Air Way. Here is a picture I took of the terminal a few years ago.The best book on the Grand Central Air Terminal is Madcaps, Millionaires and Mose; by John Underwood. It's out of print, but copies are available in the gift shop at the Doctors House.

Filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the proposed gang injunction would severely restrict the ability of the Toonerville gang to engage in criminal and nuisance activities within the Los Angeles River-Glendale Safety Zone as defined by a 4.5 square mile area within the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Division and the City of Glendale as well as a 1.25 square mile area within the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division.

Terms of the proposed injunction include many of the standard gang injunctionprovisions, including limiting the gang’s ability to associate in public with other members, intimidate witnesses, to sell or possess drugs, or to possess weapons or graffiti tools.

The injunction also includes provisions for gang members to stay away from Chevy Chase Park in the Northeast LAPD division and Palmer Park in the City of Glendale – two locations known to be used by the Toonerville gang to hold meetings, engage in gang activity and intimidate residents.

According to law enforcement declarations filed with the court, the Toonerville gang has claimed the area within the L.A. River-Glendale Safety Zone for several years as its territory for criminal and nuisance activity including the sale of narcotics, graffiti vandalism, and intimidation. Members of the Toonerville gang are know to use weapons and violence to facilitate the local drug trade and have been linked to area murders, assaults and shootings.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Tonight Anne and I braved the dense smoke blanketing Glendale to walk to the Americana for the Christmas tree lighting ceremony. I'd imagine the possibility of rolling blackouts caused the Americana's operations manager some grief today. When we arrived we found the scene was absolutely mobbed. We made it into the complex and managed to drift through the masses to a spot fairly close to the tree (or "tree", after all of the trauma it's been through!). After 15 minutes of looking at a dark tree, we were getting bored and hungry, so we left to get dinner at In N Out. After eating, we walked south towards the Americana only to find police officers on the sidewalk turning hundreds of people away - the Americana was entirely full and no one else was being allowed in.

I'm sure business all over downtown Glendale was very good tonight. The streets everywhere were densely packed with pedestrians. After walking home, we watched the fireworks display from the kitchen window.